So this is late, but I hope you guys had wonderful holidays. I spent most of mine sick. It sucked 😦

Yes, it’s been a LONG time since I last posted here. I had all these grand ambitions and even wrote a list of topics I was going to blog about after crossing over from unpublished to published author.

It’s funny how life catches up with you.

A few administrative things:

There will be print copies of Communion (that’s right, get excited).

I will posting my sales stats from Oct. to Dec. soon.

There will be a sequel to Communion, at least two if I have my way. The working title for book 2 is Integral.

When I started writing this post a few days ago, I only had a basic (VERY basic) list of ideas for Integral. Right now I’m toying with which social issue to address in Integral.

For those of you who have read Communion, the “moral” my character learns is the best way to handle his bullies is to have a group of good friends. Of course, Les learns this in the hardest way and after several loses.

I’ll be doing more research all weekend to nail a new issue down and I plan to begin the first draft as early as February.

In Communion, the group has to get Lester to drink human blood in order to awaken his dhampir abilities. Getting someone to drink blood at random is pretty tough, so the group puts it in his drink. Here’s the scene:

“So, Lester, Roman makes this drink called a Bloody Stake. I normally don’t take mine with alcohol. But if alcohol’s your thing, his dad has a wide selection.” I saw the chance Gwynn gave me and took it. “How about I take my first one without and— depending on where the night goes—we’ll see.” She smiled. “But…” I began. I tried to think of a graceful way to say I’d prefer to be around Roman when he made the drinks. Gwynn laughed. “You still don’t trust us?” “I never said that.” “But you felt it.” I shrugged. I wasn’t sure what to think of her knowing how I felt. “Let’s head to the kitchen so you can watch Roman work.” Roman reached into the freezer and pulled out a pre-made Bloody Mary mix with a TGI Friday’s logo. “Better rinse out the glasses in case Lester suspects there’s some roofie residue at the bottom.” Roman shot Brent an annoyed glance but did so. I sat down at the kitchen table, deciding that my presence would be enough to dissuade any mischief. And just in case, I still glanced over at Roman making the drinks every now and then. When he added some tabasco sauce, I figured maybe it was better I didn’t know the ingredients. Gwynn and Brent were talking easily amongst themselves. They’d broken up months ago, but I wondered if there were still lingering feelings. “Here you go.” Roman passed me a cup. Its contents looked like cherry Kool-Aid. The four of us toasted to nothing in particular. I sipped. Then my eyebrows jumped from the sweetness hitting my tongue and I quickly downed the rest. “That was great!”

Will we see much of the Mikaelsons with them getting their own spinoff?

I have a feeling we’ll still get quite a bit of Rebekah, as her romance with Matt seems to finally be starting (hopefully the boy comes to his senses).

But Klaus will have a full-time job handling Marcel over in New Orleans. And, if there aren’t any werewolves or hybrids used this season, our heroes don’t need Klaus’s blood. Although…

How will human Katherine be used?

With the doppelganger as a human again, Klaus has every reason to go after Katherine. Worst of all, our heroes have no personal incentive to save her.

But what if Silas has plans for her?

We still don’t know who the original Petrova was, the person Katherine and Elena are shadow copies of. What if the original was Silas’s lover?

Silas in Stefan’s body

Silas is “back.” His original goal was to break the veil between worlds and then drink a potion which would remove his immortality and then kill himself. Now, the only witch powerful enough to break that veil is dead and the vampirism cure has been used on Katherine.

Will Silas get a new objective in life or will he come up with another way to finally get to his beloved?

If he can’t get back to her, what if he can use a Petrova doppelganger’s body to bring her to him? Assuming my earlier theory is right.

And of course…

Team Damon is victorious!

I want more Delena scream time and I want it starting with the first episode!

Who knows, maybe Stefan will get human Kathryn as a consolation prize.

Today I’m making a guest appearance on Mari Well’s blog for her Vampire Wednesday series. If you’re a fan of vampires or vampire like creatures or if you’re a writer/read who’s looking for something vampirish but a little different, be sure to check out Mari’s blog. Today you’ll get some detailed info on how my dhampir work.

“Lester Fuller knows isolation well. It has been his only friend since Jadarius Singleton humiliated him last year. But one night after Jadarius’s taunts go too far, Lester stumbles upon Gwynn’s body. He’s sure she’s dead. Until she bites him.

Vampires are extinct. There are only the dhampir.

Now something more than human, Lester struggles to determine where he fits in this new society. Just what secrets about the dhampir are his new friends keeping from him? And what will he do when a notorious figure from dhampir history sets her eyes on him?”

I’ve spent the past week and a half on overdrive and I’ll finally get to see the fruits of my labor.

OR WILL I?

Tomorrow is the first day of MANY years that Communion will be available to the world. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to be a stellar first day that proves to everyone I’m going to be a successful writer. In fact, most people who buy Communion tomorrow will be you faithful readers of this blog and friends I’ve met since becoming more active on the internet.

More readers and fans won’t come until later, some of them much later than tomorrow. Despite all my blogging and tweeting and commenting, the internet is a big place. It’ll be a LONG time before even a fraction of the internet knows Communion even exists, let alone considers buying it.

TOMORROW IS THE FIRST STEP

At this point, I’m getting tired of first steps. I thought planning the novel was it, then writing the first page, then revising it. But no, all of that was just the warm-up. Tomorrow, I cross the line from being unpublished to published. I’m out there. There’s a chance that strangers I’ve never met before will find me and come to know who I am (or what I say of in my ABOUT section).

But just like novel-writing is a marathon that took a great deal of time to complete, so is a successful writing career. Regardless of how well or how terrible Communion does tomorrow or even this month, I have to keep pushing on. I have many more books to write. Maybe I’ll see a return on my time and money invested with this first book. Maybe not until the third. Either way, I have to keep writing.

SOMEONE IS GOING TO DISLIKE THIS BOOK

Actually, I can think of at least 3 people who told me Communion wasn’t their cup of tea. All three were older (30+) women, which is completely outside of my target audience. Two of these three said they liked my writing style and want to see more work for me, but Communion wasn’t it for them.

There are going to be others who aren’t so nice. All of the greatest books I’ve ever read have 1-star reviews. Sometimes I read those reviews and think, “there’s no way this guy read the same book I did.” Regardless, it is what it is. You can’t please everyone.

So, I’ve spent the past two weeks going over Communion in my head, scene by scene, trying to predict what people will dislike. I’ve done calculations in my head to come up with how much I need to sale to become a full-time writer.

But enough is enough. The world gets its first taste of my dhampir tomorrow. I won’t sit back and wait. Instead I begin a month of aggressive marketing (release day party, blog tour, tweets, etc.). I’ve been watching the book market for over a year now, waiting for my chance to compete. Tomorrow, I enter the fray.

After a slow chapter 3 and 4, Chapter 5 of the big X-men event Battle of the Atom brings back the action!!

We start off with a psychic battle for the record books. On one side, we have Emma Frost and the Cuckoos with Jean Grey from the past. And on the other, future Jean Grey. Seems kind of one-sided at first. But then the Cuckoos start dropping like… cuckoos.

In the meantime, Scott (both the original one and the present day version) have a real ringer on their hands: The Jean Grey School for Higher Learning team, led by Wolverine himself. Cyclops is my favorite X-men. So, seeing two of him take on a whole group of other X-men was exciting.

Although, it’s a little more convoluted than that. You see, even the X-men among the Jean Grey school are conflicted about attacking the the younger version of Scott and Jean.

Perfect example:

Young Scott does the one common sense thing I have been waiting to see in a comic: why not blast a psychic when their engaged in a psychic battle? C’mon, they can’t fight an intense battle on the mental plane while defending real-world attacks. Oh wait! Future Jean Grey can, and does.

Frosty-naut (or Future Iceman, whichever you prefer) clubs the younger Scott hard enough to make him see red. Then Wolverine jumps on his back and shouts for present day Iceman to help him.

The lines for the psychic battle are more clear. Especially after Emma goes down, proving (yet again) that she is no match for Jean Grey. In fact, no one is… except for Jean Grey.

The younger Jean outlasts the older Jean and teaches her mind to absorb knowledge about the future. Despite the warnings, she’s dying to know what could possibly be so bad about the future.

You know who else wants to know? Illyana. She shows up at the Jean Grey School and takes young Beast and young Iceman to the future so they can see for themselves.

Back in the present, Deadpool gives an amazing speech.

“[The Future] is so screwed up they made ME an X-man.”

Even Wolverine tells him so, to which Deadpool replies it was all lies (c’mon, this is Deadpool).

Now that younger Jean Grey has seen the future, she tells younger Scott that it’s time for them to go.

But just when we think the situation is finally settled, Illyana appears in the future with the two younger X-men and they make a startling discovery…

The writing for this issue was superb. Easily a step above the last two issues. Kudos to Jason Aaron.

And I’m very glad the story is finally moving forward, but I still have some reservations. For the past three issues, the Future X-men have made a big deal out the mysterious catastrophe that occurred because the past X-men stayed in the present.

I think Henry McCoy may be at the center of this problem. He and Iceman are the only X-men to have a Past/Present/Future version. It was present day McCoy who had the GREAT idea to bring the past X-men to the present. Also, we know from an earlier issue that SHIELD think Henry McCoy is a problem because he does whatever he wants (foreshadowing?).

Still, this big catastrophe has been hyped up over several issues. Marvel has a mixed record of delivering on the hype. Hopefully this talented cast of writers won’t let us down.

Time to get ready for the Vampire Diaries Season 5 premier next Thursday. Here’s the skinny on what went down last season:

Elena: For anyone who’s [been hiding under a rock] Elena Gilbert is now a vampire. For a while, she was sired to Damon Salvatore, but this bond seems to have been broken when shut-off her humanity switch after Jeremy’s death. (My favorite thing she did) Motivated by her an obsession to kill Katherine, Elena turned her switch back on. In a twist of events, the two Nina Dobrev’s duke it out. And just when you think the one who’s 500+ years old is gonna win…

Katherine: Katherine is now a human. It’s a little said, because it totally kills her chances of getting with Elijah (it seemed like the feelings were genuine in Episode 18, American Gothic). Although, it’s totally deserved after what she did to Jeremy.

Jeremy: Jeremy was given the Hunter’s mark after vampire hunter Conner dies. This mark functions as a map and the group used it to locate the body of Silas and a cure for vampirism. Jeremy was killed in the process of reviving Silas, but was brought back via a final spell from Bonnie.

Bonnie: Is “dead.” But dead is a changeable status in the world of Vampire Diaries. The problem was, she was too powerful for her own good. Is it for her to use that power to kill people, but when she used it to bring Jeremy back to life, that was just too much for the dead witches to allow.

Damon: Our favorite bad boy is still the same. Oh! Also in the final episode, Elena confessed her love for Damon. (Suck it, Team Stefan).

Stefan: As a consolation prize, Stefan got to deliver Silas’s body-turned-stone to a lake. There, he would toss in a metal chest containing Silas’s remains, so no one would ever find it. Except, Stefan ended up being tossed into that chest.

Because Silas is alive! Turns out when Bonnie died, the spell she used to bind Silas was broken. And now Silas will roam around with Stefan’s face because Stefan is Silas’s doppelgänger!

And, let’s not forget…

Matt: My boy barely graduated. But now that he has, he’s going to travel around the world with Rebekah.

Klaus: He showed up to save the group from the visitors from the other side. But with his home of New Orleans taken over by Marcel and The Originals spin-off coming, will we be seeing much of Klaus in Season 5?

Tyler: Speaking of Klaus, he told Caroline that our favorite hybrid can come back to Mystic Falls. Hopefully Caroline can find him and tell him the good news.

Caroline: She’s graduated and off to college. We’ll see if Silas’s return puts a dent in that.